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Friday, 16 December 2011

Tale of two cities, a fairy tale.

Home-made Christmas continues. Daughter number 3 claims she has never, ever glittered and that I am a bad mother for not allowing her to cover my carpets with shiny stuff. So this year she made up for it by glittering all her friend's cards, especially her best male friend's (who is more Gok than, well Gok).

What hasn't gone well is the idea of homemade food presents. Daughter number 1 has a gall bladder problem and is on a restricted diet, Paula as we know is in hospital and sending cookies to Roo and FL given FL's sore mouth might be a tad cruel. I am currently trying to devise a Plan B.

Plan B may include elements of my latest fad, up-cycling or as some might say, good old-fashioned make do and mend. Once upon a time this princess went to parties and the occasional university ball. I had a gorgeous purple silk dress, which I was keeping for a special occasion. My choice of storage was not the best though. The plastic sealed crate kept out the moths and dust, but not the sunlight and my beautiful silk dress became sun bleached. I was going to throw it in the bin until I realised I could unpick the seams and use the silk panels "inside out".

Sun bleached patch. Photo doesn't capture the true colour purple!

I used two of the unpicked panels to line a basket which I bought from the local charity shop for £1.99!

I then filled the basket with wonderful goodies. Single Christmas puddings, jams, fruit teas, cakes, scones and pots of custard.

The basket was then taken, Little Red Riding Hood style off to a poorly patient.

The poorly patient was of course Paula in Liverpool and we did meet a wolf (of sorts) on the way too. As we arrived at Lime Street we spotted several policemen and one of them had a sniffer dog. "Crikey" I said to Mike, "what will he think of our basket of food? Maybe we'll get stopped." Before we reached the dog however, the "wolf" decided that a young gentleman, with his jeans hanging below his boxer shorts, was a far better meal. The "wolf" quickly wrapped the lead he was wearing around the young gentleman's legs and as we passed the officer was explaining to the gentleman what exactly it was that the "wolf" could smell!

We found Paula sitting up on the bed with several VERY large balls of yarn, busily knitting a horse blanket, well she said that was what her Auntie Anne had called it. She seemed in extremely good spirits and was hoping, everything crossed to be home for Christmas, with just the three weekly trips for dialysis. Luckily she didn't turn into the big bad wolf, although it was a possibility when B turned up with her requested sponge. When she opened the bag what should she find but a "body buffer" you know, those weird plastic net things that claim to exfoliate your skin.

My favourite moment though was while Mike was talking to Paula about getting curtains dry-cleaned. The little old lady across the ward was being visited by her husband. Enid was telling him she had had a shower that morning and then asked him "Have you had a shower today, only you smell of poo!" How do you laugh hysterically without drawing attention to yourself? Luckily Enid was very deaf!

After four hours of boring Paula and much later B. we decided around five o'clock that we should head off and find something to eat before getting the train home. We ended up having steak and chips in a Weatherspoons pub, before starting to walk back to the station. All would have been well, had we not spotted McHales, an Irish American bar we had first frequented during New Year 2005/6. A couple of pints later and we were dancing with the rest of the regulars. It seems that lots might have changed in the last 6 years, but the welcome in that bar isn't one of them.

Only problem was we missed the train we were planning to catch and nearly missed the one after that!

3 comments:

Err...who is that skinny girl with the basket? Ms Lorna, have you been on another diet? You look fantastic!(You always do of course, but I meant particularly fantastic. Maybe it was Gokker-than-Gok who did it?!)Clearly you spoiled the patient - well done! I wonder what the sniffer dog would have made of Enid's husband?

What a wonderful Christmas tale this was. I loved it! That Enid sure knows how to spread the cheer, doesn't she though? So funny. And it seems missing the train was well worth it. We saw one of those sniffer dogs in Vermont last year. They had fenced off an area at a fair and were doing a demonstration of how the dog could sniff out marijuana. They kept the dog out of the area and buried a little plastic baggie of the stuff under some grass. The thing is, pot is a common thing for folks in VT. LOTS of people smoke it. I was more interested in seeing if people were walking away from thearea before they let the dog back out of the car so as not to have the dog sniff THEM out instead. I thought that would be a riot. The dog made a loop and then quickly found the baggie without any subsequent arrests of those watching. :o) Happy holidays to y'all! xx